School performance is NOT a great indicator of intellect. The most successful people I know did just enough to get by decently in school and spent the rest of their efforts on activities that made them happy or were more productive. People who drove themselves crazy working as hard as they could in school generally didn’t get anywhere in the real world.

As Trump said, it would be his dream to have Pelosi lead the Democrats. She is the perfect person for him to villainize to replace Hillary Clinton. The Democrats need a fresh and confident face, someone who could build a following like Obama did and beat Trump in 2020.

I am a libertarian and share the Republicans small government values… But Trump is an evil dictator who believes in nothing but himself.

Since the elderly across the world seem hellbent on stopping trade between countries, electing dictators, and promoting a warlike stance I have a suggestion – in the next war, the elderly should be drafted first and put on the front lines first.

They are the most expendable as most are retired and don’t contribute to the world.

Historically it has always been old men sending youth to fight and die. It’s their turn now.

I bet if all countries agreed to a draft the elderly first law, you would see an instant cessation of all war. All of these warhawks are full of hot air and will pipe down when it is their own mottled behinds at risk.

Also I highly recommend this book https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Man’s_War

I just watch this documentary that National Geographic created following a group of Green Berets in Afghanistan. The soldiers are very intelligent and motivated people who sacrificed themselves after 9/11 to join and fight for the people in our country. The American people and our elected leaders are the true idiots. We have wasted hundreds of thousands of lives in Afghanistan (both Americans and Afghans) needlessly. I think that we were right to overthrow the Taliban, but the way we have tried to pacify the country after that is totally wrong. The Romans showed 2000 years ago how you can control the known world when you only have one Roman citizen to each of hundreds or thousands of other people. the Romans were able to bring the Pax Romana, 300 years of peace to the world, through much more effective strategies than we use today. We use a stupid strategy called winning the hearts and minds which will never work when those hearts and minds are afraid of being shot by Taliban. A better strategy would be with the Romans did when one of their soldiers were killed, they killed a hundred locals at random and they told the locals to hunt down and prevent any more Romans from being killed. Afghan locals would then have a choice of for SURE getting killed by American bombs and troops if one of us died or MAYBE being killed buy a low tech Taliban supporter. The local villages would push out all of the Taliban and fight for us. Afghanistan would be at peace now with only a few thousand dead instead of hundreds of thousands dead. Ignorant short-term compassion cost enormously more lives in pain by not following the hard but right long road.

Basic economic law should dictate much more public policy. The laws of supply and demand, gains from specialization and trade, and other economic laws should make decision-making far simpler and public policy.

Affordable housing could be had for all with laws that allow for much more high-density housing, and permitting rules are much quicker and easier to go through. Developers would build tons more housing and drive prices down.

Healthcare, legal help, internet and many other areas could have far lower prices by removing the government issued monopolies (franchised monopolies). Government should not limit practice in any field by issuing licenses. People could rely upon private organizations that issue licenses instead. People are afraid that quality would go down under a system like this, however if you compare Yelp to government issued restaurant ratings you will find that the private review sites are far more accurate.

Processed sugar (aka CANDY) is a poison to human beings. Pretty much every function of your body gets into trouble when you eat sugar.

So why is Halloween a giant holiday? Why does Halloween alone lead to $9 billion in candy (processed sugar) sales?

Why do parents who ordinarily take good care of their kids allow them to eat large amounts of poisonous processed sugar?

I don’t know… Halloween is fun and it is cute to see kids in outfits. I enjoyed that myself. But it was depressing that over half the kids who came to my door yesterday were obese… that is not their fault, but it will haunt them throughout their lives.